Web Sites Worth Watching

Psychiatric Services offers a monthly listing of mental-health-related Web sites and other sites of interest. This list changes monthly as new sites are identified and existing sites add new features. We'd like maintaining the list to be an interactive process, so tell us about your favorite sites or what you'd like to be able to find on the Web. You can reach us by e-mail at psjournal @psych.org.

Associations

Mental Disability Rights International—www.mdri.org The Web site of this advocacy group, which was formed by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law and American University's Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, provides international news, publications, and United Nations standards for mental disability rights.

American Psychoanalytic Foundation—www.cyberpsych.org/apf/ index.html The foundation's mission of educating the public and mental health professionals about the relevance of psychoanalysis as a powerful therapeutic and research instrument is supported by the Web site's reading list, links, events, and news sections.

Government

National Institute on Drug Abuse—www.nida.nih.gov Provides information about NIDA's strategic plan to eliminate drug abuse disparities among racial and ethnic groups, a survey tracking alcohol and drug use by high school students, and information on various drugs of abuse.

Health and Medicine

American Council of Science and Health—www.asch.org This consumer-education consortium's Web site covers a full spectrum of contemporary public health issues, including cigarette smoking, AIDS, alcohol consumption, nutrition, pharmaceutical safety, biotechnology, health care reform, and medical screening.

iVillage's allHealth—www.allhealth.com An outgrowth of one of the first online health communities, the Better Health and Medical network, this site features magazine-type coverage as well as special-interest communities, support groups, and databases of articles by experts on a wide range of medical conditions.

Other Useful Resources

Mediconsult's Pharmaceutical Information Page—www.pharminfo.com Although commercial, the site offers varied and often-updated information about pharmaceuticals and drug interactions.

Health Privacy Project—www.healthprivacy.org Dedicated to raising public awareness of why health privacy is important to improve health care access and quality on an individual and a community level, the project's site includes graphic presentations about the privacy of health records and information about federal and state laws.

Counselling and Diagnosis in Dementia—www.candid.ion.ucl.ac.uk /candid/index.htm Offers support, information, and education for caretakers of younger people with dementia. Includes a chat room for caregivers, recommended reading lists, fact sheets, and a resource center for online and traditional information sources.

Featured Site

FirstGov—www.firstgov.gov

FirstGov, which opened in September, is the Internet portal for the U.S. federal government. The Web site consolidates 27 million government Web pages and is designed to be the first source that people will use when they don't know where to locate needed governmental information. Visitors can search by topic, rather than by agency. The site offers three ways to find information. Users can search by keyword. Another option is to browse through 16 broad topic areas, such as healthy people and science and technology, and follow the links to thousands of information sources. The third option is to click on one of the three branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—and browse through the list of links. Visitors are invited to provide feedbck by topic or agency or about FirstGov itself.